Weird
by LoadedEel
Summary: In which Natsu feels a little strange and goes to the best in the business for advice, but gets it from someone he wasn't expecting. One-shot for 12RedSky34.


All Rights to Hiro Mashima

My interpretation on how our sweet little flaming burrito would handle figuring out he was in love. Dedicated to **12RedSky34**. Little drabble filled with Love~

* * *

 **~ Weird ~**

 _In which Natsu starts to feel weird when he looks at his job partner and best friend, then goes to the most unlikely source for help._

* * *

It had all started less than two months prior.

He had just…woken up one day in a different mood. Yes, the sky was still blue and Fairy Tail was still standing – for how long this time no one could guess – and he loved his Nakama to the ends of Earthland and back.

But.

He still felt…strange.

Weird.

At that point, he had chalked it up to his dream that he didn't really remember that had been filled with sparkling brown eyes and dangerous curves, or perhaps his best friend's weirdness had finally rubbed off on him after all these years.

Yah. That was it. It had nothing at all to do with how she was so pretty or her hair shone like gold or the fact that he wanted to curl up around her like a cat and sleep on her breasts.

Nope.

He had sat up in his hammock and stretched, sighing at the fact that all of his joints had popped and cracked. He was getting older, there was no doubt about it. After Alvarez and all the abuse and torture and ridiculous stunts his body had gone through over his life, it truly was a wonder how he was still functioning relatively well. Sometimes he felt like he was only hanging together by a single thread and at a moment's notice, he could unravel, useless on the floor.

But, he had Happy, and Lucy and the rest of his guild to pick him up and dust him off if he should need it.

Natsu had set out to the guild hall, determined to brawl his way out of this…funk and eat his weight in foods that had been set on fire. Then he would also eat said fire, annoy Lucy a bit, and either go on a mission with his team or if there wasn't anything good…take his little buddy to their special fishing hole and catch some dinner.

Ah yes, life was simple. He was a straight forward man, he didn't take any bullshit and liked everyone until they gave him a reason not to. Natsu didn't carry any resentment, even towards his enemies, and enjoyed the three big Fs to no end.

Food.

Fighting.

Friends.

(Not necessarily in that order, and sometimes all at once if he could wrangle it.)

Natsu had grinned widely, slammed open the guild doors, and took a deep _deep_ breath to scream out one of his more famous lines (WE MADE IT BACK ALIVE! To which most would answer WHO THE FUCK CARES YOU PYRO!?) But promptly had the wind knocked out of him so all that he uttered was a most pathetic wheezing sound and a small puff of smoke.

It wasn't a physical attack in any sense, it was just…something that he had seen.

It was Lucy, sitting at the bar, having a girly chatting session with Mira over the pros and cons of something called primer.

He _had_ seen her almost literally every _single_ day for the past…what? Almost seven years? (not including the time skip and definitely not including that year he took to "find himself and get stronger") and he had never had a reaction like this to her.

Her hair was a so shiny and golden, skin soft and pure as fallen snow, those big brown eyes he loved to see fired up with righteous fury, and those sinfully dangerous curves that he knew would be perfect to grab and squeeze and _mark-_

His heartbeat had skyrocketed suddenly and so fast that he knew the other Slayers (mainly Wendy as the other two fuckwads were jackasses and couldn't give two shits about whether or not he was having heart palpitations apparently) were throwing him strange looks because they could _fucking_ _hear it in his chest_.

Natsu had absolutely no clue what the hell was going on with him. It was just Lucy. She was just sitting. At the bar. By herself.

She had done it countless times before and that was where she always sat waiting for him.

But she looked…different.

No.

Better?

No. ARGH! He didn't know what his brain and his heart and apparently his goddamn penis were all thinking – because that little bastard had woken up as he watched Lucy lean over the bar and cross her luscious thighs together – but Natsu knew something was changing and he didn't have any idea how to handle it.

The woman had him almost thinking of poetry in his own mind, and if that didn't throw up any red flags he didn't know what would. (For the Gods sakes…skin soft and pure as newly fallen snow? Who was he? Juvia?)

By that time, more than one person (including Lucy who he was suddenly having a weird staring contest with over the heads of their family when she turned around abruptly) had noticed his strangeness and he suddenly remembered that he was still standing at the entrance of the beer hall after throwing open the double doors like an idiot without saying _anything_.

He choked out a quick "Yo!" and proceeded to scuttle off to the far corner of the room to sit as far away from Lucy as fucking possible and try to regulate his breathing and calm his heart and _goddammit all to hell_ get his fucking dick under control because having a boner in the middle of the morning surrounded by his _family_ was not a good time.

No, it was a one-way ticket to being relieved of said penis by one of Erza's many sharp pointy swords.

He had shuddered and subsequently, deflated, silently remembering to think about being eviscerated by Titania should he ever need to quell another furiously stubborn hard-on.

Then, after an hour of quietly contemplating whether or not he should freak out any further on the subject of this little…fluke, life had gone back to normal, or as normal as one could get in the guild Fairy Tail. If he had knocked Gajeel around a bit harder than normal because of all the pent up tension he had stored in his muscles from his weird morning episode, no one would really know.

* * *

 **-ooo-**

* * *

Natsu had believed – naively – that that would be the end of his weird feelings.

But no. Of course, it would never be that simple.

He was practically tortured (he would argue that his dick being strangled by his pants on a daily basis was painful enough to qualify) mercilessly by his best friend. Every day, with those short skirts and the tank tops and that long pony tail of golden hair that swayed down her back. It was enough to drive him mad with lust and longing and _need_.

Oh, he wasn't as stupid as everyone liked to believe. He understood carnal acts, it was in his nature. He was practically half-dragon and more animal than all the other mages combined. He lived off his intuition and instincts to keep him alive, and this wasn't anything different.

And it wasn't just the need to fuck her sideways that drove his cravings for her. It was her selfless acts of kindness, how those deep amber eyes looked at him with complete and utter trust, how she spoke his name, how she smiled and laughed and giggled. It was everything, she was everything and set his little soul aflame and made his heart do a jig in his chest constantly.

After almost two straight months of swinging between proverbial heaven and hell that Lucy wrought on his body and mind and heart, here he was, getting _advice_ of all things from the person he knows shouldn't be let in on his dilemma even if she was the last mage in Earthland.

Mirajane, the She-devil herself, in all her glory.

At first, he was just going to ask for a fire-whiskey, but then he started to contemplate whether he should ask someone for help about what he was feeling for Lucy. He couldn't go to Erza because she would chop his balls off first and ask questions later, Happy didn't really know anything about human mating and would probably just tease him, and Lisanna would just coo and tell him that she was happy that he was finally all grown up.

So with trepidation in his heart and fear in his eyes, he waved Mira down from the other end of the bar and she practically materialised in front of him with a genuinely disturbing look on her face.

"I know you've got something good Natsu Dragneel, I can see it on your face. Spill."

He grimaced, his face twisting in disgust at what he was about to do. "Alight…alright. I need…help."

"With what?"

Natsu groaned and glanced around surreptitiously. Good, he was the only Slayer in the guild today, Happy was with Charles and Lucy had gone shopping with Erza.

Perfect.

"I need, advice about…"

"Yessss…."

"Dammit. I need help with Lucy."

The excited twinkle in her eyes set his teeth on edge, but he soldiered on. Natsu didn't mention the erection details and the fact that he constantly wanted to bend his blonde partner over one of the wooden tables of the guild and mount her mercilessly (because no one needed to know about that perverted side of his brain), but did dive into the more obscure details about how weird his heart was acting and how he couldn't stop thinking about Lucy, and how he felt like he wanted to die and simultaneously rip the throat out of every man that got too close to her.

Mira had been quiet the whole time he was explaining, and when he finally heard someone speak, it wasn't from the woman in front of him.

Oh no. Because this hadn't been mortifying enough, now he had to get his icy rival in on this shit.

"Goddamn. You are really that stupid aren't you?"

Instead of retorting with a nice SHUT UP YOU PERVERTED STRIPPER AND WHERE ARE YOUR FUCKING PANTS? Natsu hung his head and sighed.

"Whatever Gray, say what you need to say then get the hell out of here."

Gray immediately sobered up, his frenemy never said his birth name unless the situation was dire. "Chill out. I'll help alright?" Gray had glanced at Mira for a moment, then back to the pathetic looking Dragon Slayer who was now repeatedly hitting his head on the wooden bar top. "I know what you're feeling for Lucy. I-" The Devil Slayer had sighed here and swallowed his pride, "I feel it too, all the time."

At that point Natsu's head had literally lit on fire and Gray would look back on this from the future and admit he could have worded it a bit better.

The snarl that had wormed its way out of Natsu's chest made the ice-make mage feel a pit of icy dread in his stomach (something that happened on rare occasions when he knew he was truly fucked).

"Don't you fucking touch her! She's mine!"

So Gray did the only thing he could do in this strange situation he had gotten himself into once again: encase his rivals head in a solid block of everlasting ice until the fucker calmed down.

"Gods! I didn't mean it like that! Holy fuck, calm down your idiot." Gray lowered his voice until it was but a whisper and made Mira lean over her bar counter to hear. But he knew the Slayer could hear it no matter what. "I meant…for Juvia. Not Lucy…she's like…my sister or something like that. It would be gross."

Natsu cast a suspicious glance at the Popsicle before snorting a puff of smoke, switching into his END form and melting the ice off himself as soon as possible. (To which Gray pouted because that ice was supposed to be everlasting, obviously.)

"So you feel these…things for Juvia then? Alright…but what the hell do they all mean? I understand lust…but that's not it. I know it's not. I get the Dragon part of it, but I'm a human too…Igneel never got around to teaching me that sort of stuff before he left."

Gray promptly groaned, motioned for a shot of whatever Mira had on hand, and downed it as soon as it was handed to him. His face twisted in a grimace. Gross…Tequila. "If I didn't think you were this hopeless, and clueless, I wouldn't say a fucking word. But…I hate seeing you so pathetic, I'll tell you."

Natsu leant forward eagerly, disregarding all the insults completely.

But Mira got there before him and blurted out "You're in love." Thank the Gods for little miracles. He didn't have to say that shit out loud. Bless the She-Demon.

Mira ambled off with a quick wave to refill Wakaba's drinks and left the Devil Slayer with a truly confused Fire Dragon and no way to escape.

"So…this feeling is…love. That's it? That's what love is? It's fucking weird."

Gray reached across the bar and hefted the bottle of Tequila and promptly took another shot. He would need it to get through this conversation, even if he abhorred it. "Yes. Dumbass. It's love. Believe me."

"What do I do about it?"

Now…Gray wouldn't say he was a dick, but he was certainly feeling a smidge vindictive, seeing as Natsu knew a secret about himself and he had spilt it in front of Mira as well. So he decided to mess with the Slayer a little, just so that they were on an even playing ground again.

"You tell her. As soon as possible."

"Yeah?"

"Kiss her too. Just to get your point across."

"I guess…"

The doors were promptly kicked open by Erza holding – sweet Mavis…so many shopping bags – with Lucy trailing in behind her. Gray scoffed at her outfit, a short skirt and a tight red shirt with a coiled dragon on the front. It was like she advertising how much she wanted Natsu. He had noticed over the course of at least half a year…possibly more, that Lucy was getting bolder in her pursuit of Natsu. It wasn't her fault that her chosen was a bit of an idiot when it came to social interactions.

With a great sense of glee, Gray also realised – glimpsing Natsu's determined expression – that he would most likely be able to see Erza chop him into little pieces for even attempting to put his lips anywhere near the Celestial Mage she thought of as her younger sister.

He pushed a shot of the Tequila to Natsu 'for luck' and watched as he downed it, swiped his mouth, nodded towards Gray, then strode purposefully towards Lucy.

This was going to be good.

Natsu was ready, he had advice from his rival on his side – which was a weird thing to think but whatever, he could roll with it – and as soon as he caught a glimpse of Lucy in that sinfully tight shirt and skirt combo, he couldn't even stop himself if he tried.

He went right up to her, right into her personal space like he loved to do (she got all red and blushy and stammered a lot, it was cute, and dammit how did he not notice sooner than this?) cupped her face in his hands and starred at her, hard.

But with love…but mostly with conviction.

"W-what…Natsu what the hell is going on? What are you doing?" Her voice was breathy and amazing and it zinged across his nerves like his magic.

"—Lucy…I'm in love with you."

Her small squeak of "what?" was pretty adorable, but he needed to get it through her head that he loved her, like…a whole lot and _needed_ her to know it. Right that second. He wasn't joking around and this wasn't some elaborate prank. It was real.

So he kissed her, hard. His hands fell from her face to grasp her waist and that was a good thing because no more than three seconds later (longest seconds of his entire life) she had all but melted into the floor, his vest clutched in her hands. But she was kissing him _back_.

Enthusiastically.

Then he sighed and she slipped her tongue into his mouth to fight and twine with his and _damn_ wasn't that the best feeling in Earthland?

When he needed air, the broke apart and he leant his forehead against hers. He could hear a ringing in his ears and his heart was beating way too fast, but he could still hear her whispered "Finally." As if she had shouted it.

Natsu hiked her up over his shoulder and she yelped, objecting to being carried like a sack of potatoes, apparently. Gave Gray a one-fingered salute and high tailed it out of the very, _very_ silent guild hall.

Gray shot back the same salute and took another shot, grinning like he had won the lottery. And essentially he had…sort of.

He smirked at his slack jawed family. "Pay up losers." (He ended up splitting the winnings with Mira to keep her mute about his love for Juvia. He had a feeling that Natsu would be silent about it because even though they were rivals, they were also brothers. Not that he would ever say that to his face.)


End file.
